Video News Releases

GM Tries To Drive Young Journalists

"It seems what young student journalists would be 'learning' from this experience is how to take a free trip and meals from one of the company's larger corporations," wrote University of North Carolina business journalism professor Chris Roush. He had just received an email from one of General Motors' PR people, asking for help in promoting GM's "First College Journalists Event," in Las Vegas on September 9 and 10.

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Prez Press Room Retrofit Aiming at Message Control?

Technological advances in a refurbished White House Press Room open the door (or wall, actually) to daily presidential video news releases, says Professor Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. "The equivalent of press releases could go out without interruption or analysis," Thompson said of the new "video wall" that likely will be added to the press room when it reopens next year.

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CMD's 'Fake TV News' Report Fuels FCC Investigation

The Washington Post reports, "The Federal Communications Commission has sent letters to 77 television broadcasters, asking whether their stations had properly labeled 'video news releases' ... before broadcasting them. ...

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Keeping Media "On Track" with Audio News Releases

Old-timey radioKate Corcoran, an account executive at the New York-based PR firm Articulate Communications, told PR Week that one of the benefits of audio news releases that run to a 60-second script is control. "This allows the message to be delivered in the exact way the company chooses," she said.

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Video News Releases: The Fantasy vs. Reality

To get an idea of just how low news standards can fall, take a look at <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/vnr29" target="_blank">one of the VNRs we caught</a>, which promoted Victoria's Secret's new Beauty Rush line of candy-flavored lip glosses. The VNR, which was used as news by the <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Daily_Buzz_(TV_Station)" target="_blank">Daily Buzz</a> morning news show, featured glamour shots of Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen, who sucked on a lollipop and declared that if you use Beauty Rush products, "I think you're cool.Television stations have maintained a studied silence about our report on the use of video news releases, but the print media has fewer qualms about discussing it. Saturday's Indianapolis Star carried an op-ed piece by Jeffrey McCall, a professor of communication at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. McCall described the use of VNRs as a "sneaky strategy" by "some wayward television news operations" that blurs the line "between reality and fantasy."

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